


Someone Like You

by all_the_kings_ham



Series: A Stairway to Nowhere [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Meetings, Gabriel Has a Crush on Sam Winchester, Happy AU, M/M, Meet-Cute, Prequel, Sabriel - Freeform, Sam Winchester Has a Crush on Gabriel, Self-Indulgent, Short One Shot, because it's good to write happy aus, original dog characters - Freeform, sam and gabe and even more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 20:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20880032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_the_kings_ham/pseuds/all_the_kings_ham
Summary: After many weeks Sam finally talks to the cute guy he's been watching at the park.





	Someone Like You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VegasGranny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VegasGranny/gifts).

> So, at least one of you lovelies needed a bit more Sabriel in your life after finishing off the Stairway to Nowhere story. Not my first time writing this ship, though the other time was for a story I never posted up over here and it was a very minor note that Sam and Gabe were a couple, so it was fun to get to devote a few pages to just these two goofballs finally getting up the courage to talk to that cute guy they keep seeing.

Sam went to the dog park on Thursdays. 

Not because it was his only morning without classes; the guilt that he should have spent that free time studying was only too real. However, after weeks of research, he’d learned that Thursdays from 9-10 was the only certain time that Loki’s owner would be there at the dog park. 

It left Sam feeling like some sort of a stalker, which was only natural since he’d spent nearly four months sitting in the shade, hiding from the morning sun, throwing a ratty old tennis ball for his dog Cookie, and stealing glances to the other side of the park where the blond man stood around talking with other pet parents. 

And if planning his week around making time to let his sweet little dog play with her dog friends in general proximity to the cutest guy that Sam had seen since moving out here to California wasn’t stalkery enough―Sam had the guy’s phone number.

Didn’t have a clue what the man’s name was.

Had never even been within twenty feet of him. 

But he’d read the man’s dog’s collar.

And had put the ‘if lost please call’ number into his phone.

Like the worst kind of stalker possible. 

“You know,” the woman beside him said in that irritating way that she did almost every Thursday morning, “you could… I don’t know… go and say hi.”

Sam didn’t even turn to look at Lenore. His roommate had made clear her feelings on this matter weeks ago.

“You have a good dog, he has a good dog, it’s a perfect conversation starter,” she encouraged.

“He could be very straight,” Sam argued, watching what looked like (from his side of the park at least) the other man very happily flirting with a woman who had fantastic curves and a loud laugh.

Lenore let her head fall back, looking up at him. “Sam, the guy and his dog have on matching pink shirts.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he hissed. 

If there was one thing that he’d learned since moving out here, it was that (unlike on television shows or in movies) gay people didn’t have a ‘look’ to them. Back in Kansas if you saw a guy wearing skinny jeans, a button down shirt with embroidered bananas all over it, and long hair in a bun, it would have felt safe to make an assumption or two. 

But after barking up the wrong tree on more than one occasion, Sam had decided it was best to keep to himself. A tactic that did not draw other gay men towards him, anymore than it discouraged straight women from hitting on him.

What he needed was a new tactic, only he had no idea where to start.

“You know, offer still stands,” Lenore grunted as she wrestled the wet tennis ball from Cookie’s eager mouth, “you can always come bar hopping with me and Charlie. We can find you a man.”

When Sam first started looking for a place to stay out near UCLA and answered the ad for a room to rent: ‘ _ preferably gay man, dog owner a plus _ ’, he somehow hadn’t expected to be adopted by an angry lesbian couple. Lenore and her wife Charlie were like the two older sisters he’d never wanted. They were at least five times worse than Dean had ever been, and on mornings like this Sam almost wished that he’d coughed up the extra cash and simply chosen to stay in the school dorms.

“Ok, but same two excuses I always have. I’m not looking to get laid by some random guy I meet in a bar, and I’m still not old enough to get into a bar.” 

“Then let us set you up on a nice blind date.”

“No. It’s alright.” Sighing, he leaned down to pet Cookie’s best friend, Lenore’s dog Ollie. The big, sturdy rottweiler leaned into the pets, wagging his stump of a tail.

“Then I’ll go talk to  _ Mr. Super Gay Pink Shirt  _ f _ o _ r you, if you don’t have the balls to do it yourself.”

“Please don’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Then stick to your law books and tragic gay longing―but I’ve need to get back. I’ve got a class in an hour.” 

The little blonde ran a yoga studio out of the downstairs of their house, which was just one more thing completely alien and counterintuitive to how Sam had been brought up. He’d very quickly learned to enjoy the strangeness of it though. 

“You joining us, or going to stay here and creep?”

“I’ll creep a little longer.”

“Alright, well good luck with that. Come on, Ollie. The sad gay boy needs to be alone with his sad.” She clipped the lead to her dog’s collar and the sturdy old dog eagerly started to pull her towards the exit. Lenore waved and reminded him that her and Charlie would be out late tonight and they’d try not to wake him when they got back.

But as she left, Lenore did the meanest thing possible, taking Cookie’s ball and throwing it towards the far side of the park. 

Sam watched in muted horror as the tennis ball went sailing off directly towards Mr. Pink Shirt, and silently cursed the fact that years ago his roommate had been the pitcher for her high school baseball team and had maintained a tragically good throwing arm. 

Sam was left to watch, cringing, as the ball hit the turf inches in front of the other man, and Cookie (good girl that she was) barreled forward like a steam train, too excited to look where she was going. The dog collided with the man that Sam had been quietly creeping on for weeks, shook off the impact, chomped her ball, and pranced happily back to her owner.

Mentally, Sam started going over new schools that he could apply to. Schools in other states, where no one with soft blonde hair and a friendly smile would meet his eye across a field of dogs. 

With a knot in his stomach, Sam waved awkwardly and hurriedly leaning down to tell his dog how good she was for bringing back her ball, before taking it away and pointedly tossing it in the opposite direction of the other man who had never once looked his way before today. 

Not wanting to cheat Cookie out of her usual play time, Sam refused to retreat. His own personal anxieties surrounding his unaddressed and repressed sexuality would not be used as a punishment for a very good dog who only wanted to run around and play with the other good dogs. 

As stubborn as every Winchester before him, Sam stayed under his shade tree and played fetch with his dog, giving her good pets, and scratching her ears and the ears of any other dog who came running his way. 

Including the ears of a very familiar scruffy terrier named Loki.

It was very hard to appreciate the help his roommate had thrown his way―especially when Sam finished petting dogs and straightened up to discover that the man he’d been watching from a distance was surprisingly short when viewed from up close.

Too stunned to say anything, smiling past the sudden whirlwind of butterflies in his stomach, Sam nodded what he hoped could be interpreted as a greeting until he remembered how words worked. 

“Good god,” the other man let out a surprised choking laugh, looking up with wide eyes, “mental note that using dogs for scale can be very misleading, because you are…  _ wow _ , you’re tall.”

And Sam couldn’t exactly take too much offence at that, even if he’d wanted to, because the majority of his mental processes were devoted to not saying anything stupid to the unfortunetly handsome man in the pink shirt.

“S-sorry. Hi. I’m Gabriel.” He grinned and somehow became even cuter. “I see you’ve met my son,” he nodded down to the happily prancing terrier.

“Yeah, Cookie introduced us.”

Gabriel laughed brightly, turning to Sam’s dog and offering his hands to her for sniffs and then pets. “Cookie? What a sweet name. A sweet name for a sweet girl.”

“I’m Sam,” Sam said and instantly thought of at least five better ways he could have managed to introduce himself.

“Well, that’s quite an arm you’ve got on you, Sam.”

Sam blinked.

“T-the throw,” Gabriel cleared his throat. “It was a really good throw.”

“Oh,” of course he meant the tennis ball that almost kneecapped him. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“It’s alright. Um, I don’t think we’ve seen you two around before,” Gabriel had stopped talking directly to Sam, both of his hands scratching Cookie’s sides.

“Just moved out here at the start of the semester.”

Gabriel glanced up, grinning hesitantly. “Have you and Miss Cookie had a chance to hit the dog cafe down the street?” He nodded to Sam’s bewildered expression and kept going, “It’s an outdoor eating kind of place, coffee, tea, scones, that kind of thing, and they also have these homemade dog treats that Loki just loves.”

“Yeah?” Sam glanced down at this man’s dog and did not doubt in the least that the pudgy little fellow enjoyed himself some homemade dog treats.

“We were just headed for out post playtime snack, if you and Cookie wanted to come too? My treat as a sort of ‘welcome to the neighborhood’?”

It was completely unfair that this man was as nice as he was good looking.

Sam would have been some kind of jerk if he said no, and he really didn’t want to be a jerk.

Walking along side Gabriel shouldn’t have been complicated. Walking shouldn’t have been complicated―but two happy dogs with two easily tangled leashes, and trying to keep pace with someone who had a significantly shorter stride than his own, made something as simple as walking demand almost all of Sam’s attention.

“So where are you two from?” Gabriel asked with a happy sort of exasperation as he struggled to keep Loki on the sidewalk ahead of him. 

“Kansas,” Sam smiled, “well, I am. Cookie’s from around these parts.” He wished he was better at small talk. 

Mercifully, Gabriel didn’t seem to have the same hangups. Along the way to the dog cafe Sam learned that the other man was a photographer and worked for a couple different magazines, that Loki was going to be celebrating his sixth birthday next month, and that he’d never had a driver’s license. It was an odd collection of facts, but Sam found himself grinning and laughing and happily talking through a blueberry muffin and two cups of coffee.

If anyone asked him later what the two of them had spent the day doing, he’d only be able to shrug and answer ‘talking’. He couldn’t really remember what they even talked about. 

Nothing. 

Everything.

He was positive that at some point there was a completely insane argument over what the ‘L.L.’ in L.L. Cool-J stood for, but Sam had no idea how they ended up there or why it had mattered, only that there was a lot of laughing from the two of them and some side eye from the other people in the dog cafe.

“You know what,” Gabriel leaned forward at their little table, elbows on either side of his empty plate, “I think they’re closing up. The girls behind the counter keep giving us that look.”

Sam glanced up to see that at some point he and Gabriel had become the only customers sitting in the cafe, and indeed, the girls behind the counter had that ‘please leave, we want to go home look’. Suddenly confused and concerned at how long they’d been sitting there talking, Sam took out his phone and blinked in confusion. 

“It’s… it’s almost four.”

“Really?” Gabriel looked more impressed than concerned. “No wonder I’m hungry.”

“I missed my classes,” Sam mumbled to himself, slightly distressed that he wasn’t nearly as upset as he knew that he should be.

With a nearly sympathetic shrug, Gabriel got to his feet, the movement waking the two dogs under the table. “Sorry. I’m good at losing track of time when I’m talking to… to a new  _ friend _ ?”

Sam could hear the question, and wasn’t quite sure how to answer. “Me too.”

It seemed to be the right answer, Gabriel grinning up at him before tossing some money onto the table and shouting a very sincere apology to the workers that they’d kept after hours.

“Come on, Sam,” the other man handed Cookies leash over and made towards the exit while Loki trotted happily around his feet. 

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m starving for some french toast.”

“French toast for dinner?”

“God, you sound like my brother. It’s amazing and you’ll love it.”

“I’m coming too?”

“If I’m lucky, yeah.”

“You’re… asking me over to your place?”

Gabriel stumbled over his own feet, watching Sam slowly catch up, a conflicting look on his face. “Oh. That’s probably a really bad idea, actually. Um, is it weird if I invite you to french toast dinner back at your place?”

“A little, yeah,” Sam would be lying if he disagreed. “But I’m not going to say no either.”

Months of watching this man from a distance had in no way prepared Sam for being close to a grinning Gabriel, and he wondered if this is how his big brother felt around cute girls. It was an amazingly helpless and still wonderful feeling.

Ollie met them at the front door, the old dog giving Gabriel and Loki a judging  _ boof _ before deciding they were no threat and then returned to the couch and his nap that they’d interrupted. Cookie was a more welcoming hostess, showing Loki where the food bowls were―and Sam dutifully got out kibble for the hungry dogs.

“So, what do you need for…” trailing off, Sam felt very lost when he saw the look on the other man’s face. 

It was a smile, and Gabriel seemed hardly capable of doing anything other than smiling, but it was different than before. Just a small, warm little curve to the corners of his mouth as he watched their dogs sharing a bowl of crunchy food like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

But like he could tell he was being watched, Gabriel looked over at Sam, blinking . “Sorry―what were you saying?”

“What did you need for making food?” Sam tried again, almost too eager to retreat a safe distance and start collecting ingredients as the other man rattled off his list. 

Gabriel didn’t seem to want help with the cooking part of things, humming to himself as he made dinner for them, looking cute in the way that a grown man shouldn’t, and looking very kissable in a way that Sam hadn’t anticipated. 

Sitting himself down on the floor, pretending to be playing with the dogs, Sam slipped out his cell phone and texted his older brother the dumbest text that he’d ever have to send.

**EMERGENCY!! How do you know if someone likes you and it’s ok to kiss them?**

Thankfully Sam didn’t have to wait too long before Dean texted back, obviously sensing the urgency in the question.

**details ** Was the simple reply.

Sam typed quickly,  **we met at the dog park this morning, spent the whole day talking, they are making me dinner right now while I play with our dogs**

Hardly five seconds passed before Dean’s sharp answer of,  **fucking marry her**

**This is serious, Dean!**

**I AM serious ** Dean replied in rapid fire texts. ** Anyone who is going to spend the day with you and then cook for you wants in your pants. Fuckin get it little bro**

Sam couldn’t help but smile at his phone, missing his brother something awful. Dean always seemed to know what to say, even if he didn’t say it in the most graceful way. 

Phone going back in his pocket, and dog heads getting scritches, Sam got to his feet with an apology ready just in case this didn’t work out.

“Hey, you need any help?”

“Hmm?” Gabriel half turned away from his work, jumping just a touch. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. We’ve got to put a bell on you or somethin’, Sam. You’re  _ way  _ too quiet.”

“Sorry,” Sam laughed, biting his lip and shaking his head. “Can I... and obviously it’s ok if the answer’s no, but is it alright if I give you a kiss?”

Eyes growing even wider, Gabriel giggled almost nervously. “Hells yeah it’s alright.”

Too embarrassed to move at first, Sam could only laugh a little harder, heat rushing to his cheeks.

“I mean,” Gabriel turned away from the counter, moving to stand toe to toe with Sam, “asking is a bit more direct than my super subtle plan of dragging over a chair to stand on so I could reach you―but I like your approach. It’s got a certain charm to it.”

Rubbing a hand over his eyes, dying on the inside, Sam asked, “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

Closing his eyes and puckering his lips, Gabriel put his hands to his cheeks like he was holding his face up to Sam as an offering.

It felt very deliberate.

A joke to make Sam less uncomfortable with the corner that he’d backed himself into―and he appreciated it. 

Smiling at the way that this couldn’t be any more awkward if they tried, Sam slid his hands over Gabriel’s, leaning down and kissing him softly. 

It wasn’t Sam’s first kiss. 

He’d had two separate girlfriends during his high school years, because that’s what normal, healthy, young men are supposed to do. And he’d tried to do right by both girls, because it certainly wasn’t their fault that kissing them had always left Sam feeling kind of numb and not at all excited like he knew he was supposed to be. 

Gabriel was different. 

He was sweet on Sam’s tongue, almost sugary to the point there was some suspicion that he may have been snacking on dinner ingredients. And what had initially been an endearing height difference easily became a problem demanding a solution―which obviously was Sam sliding his arms around the other man’s waist and lifting him up.

Breaking from the slow and pleasant kiss, Gabriel laughed, catching his balance with hands holding a little too tightly to Sam’s shoulders.

“Too far?” 

“No,” Gabriel grinned, shaking his head. “It’s perfect.” 

A couple slow, curious kisses and the man in Sam’s arms was readjusting, knees hooking over Sam’s hips, ankles crossing at the small of his back. 

A couple more kisses and Sam was setting the man in his arms down onto the countertop, shifting, freeing his hands to push Gabriel’s hair from his face like Sam been wanting to do all day. Kissing him rough enough to drag a hungry sound from the other man like Sam had been wanting to do for weeks. 

Somehow they forgot about dinner. 

Somehow they made it upstairs to Sam’s room.

Much like those hours they’d spent in the cafe that morning, the details after they got in bed ended up more than a little hazy in Sam’s mind. There was definitely kissing, and he was sure that there had been lots of laughter mixed with a fair share of teasing, two halting confessions of ‘I never do this sort of thing’, and so much encouraging profanity. Everything else was a pleasing, muddled mess.

Sam didn’t think that he’d fallen asleep, but blinking himself slowly awake with Gabriel’s head on his chest told a different story. Instantly giddy, but doing his utmost to keep it in, he curled arn arm over the other man’s back and slowly carded his fingers through that very soft, only slightly sweaty hair. 

Warm brown eyes peered up at him.

A very small part of Sam had spent the last few months worried that if he ever actually spoke to the cute blond on the other side of the park it would only be all sorts of disappointment. Another small part of him had been worried that after his first time he’d realise that he had somehow been very wrong for years and years and there would only be regret and more of that awful self loathing he’d been so accustomed to all throughout high school. 

Gabriel was gorgeous―and Sam grinned at him in a way that was undoubtedly embarrassing.

There were absolutely zero regrets.

“Was that your first time with a guy?”

Laughing to try and cover a groan of embarrassment, Sam raised an eyebrow and asked, “Is it that obvious?”

“Not in a bad way. Whew, boy,  _ not _ in a bad way, but yeah.” Gabriel smiled from under heavily lidded eyes. “So… is this is the part where you tell me you’re secretly married to that cute blonde you go with to the dog park?”

“What?  _ Lenore _ ? No.”

“She a girlfriend?”

“No,” He shook his head. “She’s just a roommate―her and her wife Charlie. They’re good people, but definitely not… not anything.”

“So, hot young, single guy like yourself,” Gabriel wrinkled his nose, “which is a god damned waste by the way―you just thought you’d give it a try?”

“This isn’t some sort of… “ Sam let out a frustrated breath, but it was with himself and not at all directed at Gabriel. “No. I just grew up in a very small town with a lot of very small minded people and a very strong need to not upset my very conservative parents.”

Gabriel nodded with a tight lipped half smile like he knew this story already―following the look with a sudden grin and a shake of his head, “Well, I say fuck small towns.”

Sam couldn’t hold back a startled laugh.

“And I’m very glad you ended up here.” Drawing one arm out from under himself, Gabriel reached up to twist some of Sam’s hair between his fingers.

“Me too.”

“See now,” Gabriel grinned, “you look at me like that and I care less and less that I’ve got work tomorrow morning.”

Sudden disappointment gripped Sam and he tried to hold it back, tried to keep his smile perfectly in place. “Oh, do you need to get going?”

“Hell no. What I need is to send a text saying I’m going to be late, because until your fine ass decides to kick me out I’m staying right here.” He folded his arms over Sam’s ribs, propping his chin up and looking like he had no intention of being moved. 

“And you’ll let me help you make breakfast in the morning?”

Gabriel bit back a smile. “You are devastatingly cute.”

“I’m cute?” Sam asked as he slowly traced his fingers over the other man’s hips.

“ _ Devastatingly _ ,” Gabriel repeated, kissing the corner of Sam’s mouth. “I’ve always thought so.”

“Always?” He laughed, only too happy to turn his head, following after the other man’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Gabriel laughed breathily into the kisses, “ever since I first saw you at the park a few months back.”

Sam blinked, raising his eyebrows as he pulled back. 

“Hey,” there was no shame at all to be found in the man laying on top of him, “saying ‘ _ I haven’t seen you around here before _ ’ sounds a hell of a lot better than ‘ _ me and the girls at the park have been admiring you for weeks _ ,’ right?”

Stunned at the confession, all Sam could do for a moment was laugh.

“Not exactly the reaction I was expecting, but,” Gabriel chuckled alone with him, a hint of uncertainty edging in, “I mean, better than you thinking the worst of me and my intentions here.”

“No. No it’s fine,” Sam didn’t know how to explain to this man that the little lie had been so perfect that he wished he’d been the one to say it. “I think it also sounds better than _ ‘I got your phone number off your dog’s collar but I did want to come off like some kind of creep by actually calling you _ ’.”

“Ok,” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I didn’t go that far, and now I’m a little disappointed in myself because that would have been amazing.”

“Well, it would be awkward for our dogs if we both used them like that,” Sam said almost like an apology, shrugging his way through a hopefully charming grin.

“ _ Wait _ . Did you?” Gabriel half sat up, looking somewhere between impressed and surprised. “ _ Really _ ?”

Sam shrugged again.

Curling forward, Gabriel kissed him, slow and open mouthed, rough and hungry like he had been when Sam first pushed him onto the bed some time ago, pulling back only enough to grin and ask, “What am I going to do with you?”

Singhing contently, Sam shook his head, “We already talked about this, you’re going to make breakfast with me in the morning.”

Laughing Gabriel rolled onto his back, arms around Sam’s neck as he pulled him along, whispering, “I am very,  _ very _ glad you ended up here.”

“Me too.”


End file.
